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 Five Ten just sent me a batch of their new Stealth Paint. This stuff is great if you want to customize any of your climbing shoes with an extra patch of sticky rubber. If you find that you drag your toes a lot for added stability when you climb, or you use toe-hooks every time you’re in a roof, then you know how you can get the same hole in the same spot of your favorite climbing shoes. With the Stealth Paint you can work a light layer of the super sticky rubber right on your shoes’ problem area, giving you added stick for sending while protecting your kicks from wear and tear. For years I’ve seen Joe get the same hole over the knuckle of his big toe every month. He has used all kinds of cement glues, ect. to fix his shoes, the Stealth Paint is perfect for this!

      The set up is pretty simple. Mix the appropriate amounts of glue and Five Ten Paint, which come together in the kit. It can be a little messy your first time, so do it over newspaper or something. Once mixed, begin working the paint over the desired area of the shoe. As far as I can tell the best way to apply the paint is to roll it again and again over the area like a pizza dough, not too thin but it sticks to its self and needs some working to be spread out. Let them sit over night and Ta-dah!

   Beyond begin able to customize your climbing shoes, it’s nice to know that Five Ten is using its left over rubber for another purpose rather than just trashing it. Call it eco-friendly, economical, or good business since, it works! Here’s tutorial on how to use the paint.  

 Dave G doing up his five tenies.

   I’m totally into this steeze. I swear my sister had the same do’ circa 88′. If I wasn’t so drowned in lame climber fashion I might take the plunge. But I suppose I’ll leave this one for the style pros. 

Motivation is a funny thing. Like where is comes from and where it goes. I’d have to say that for the past month I have NOT been motivated for much of anything besides complaining about being not motivated and trying to find other things to curb my lack of zeal. When I look at the situation logically there are some completely mental indicators for my struggle.

            First, being back in Utah means I’m back to the closest thing I have to local area (hum maybe Rifle too), this also means I’ve climbed myself into a corner. The routes I can do fast and with ease are dunzo, and now I must focus on more severe lines, and do as Joe and Misty say “Step it up!” I wish such actions were as easy as their words. It’s strange how when you’re sucking on a project the motivation goes so quickly. Like I find myself not even trying hard on the hard part because well, it’s too hard. Then it’s like, why even try at the top if you can’t do the bottom, ect, ect blahblahblah… So day upon day of sitting on a rope is bad for motivation I decide, real bad.

            Another strange black hole of motivation was coming from my house full of mutant guests. One may think that surrounding yourself with insanely strong folks would motivate you and get you to get all amped up and dyno v15. It seems that I’ve come to grips with Joe’s climbing abilities being quantum leaps for astounding than mine, but to then see that Jon, Daniel, Dave, Lauren, Isaac, Sonnie and Mike D all make my project appear to be 5.5, well it makes me wonder why I even try. (And yes that is the line up in my house at the moment, freakin pro-hostel).

            Beyond the mere technical reasons I like to get down on myself, was the fact that I think I’m a little bored of only sport climbing. Don’t tell Joe he’ll cry, but I’m really psyched to boulder, trad-climb, ice-climb, whatever (k not ice climb, but you get it.) Sport climbing it still my main focus, but projecting and red-pointed are getting tedious and I need something to help m break through some other barriers I have like physical plateau (bouldering) and mental strength (trad climbing). It’s amazing how hard it is to break out of your comfort zones when you’ve been climbing with same person for so long. Finding new partners and switching your game up is simple enough, but takes way more of that pesky motivation than you think.

            So what eventually pulled me out of my self indulged funk? Well first I got over it, and stopped being a lill bitch. Then it kept snowing every other day up north, so I abandoned my dreams of Joe’s Valley and made myself focus on local cliffs. Then Bill Ohran did an amazing service by bolting more lines around the Cathedral, so I had the chance to climb some sick lines more in my parameter. And finally I had this completely random strong day on one of my harder projects. Beyond that I have some other (non-climbing) projects in the works, which always clears my head a bit. I’ve never understood how I can feel like shit on something for weeks, then one day just hike, but I suppose these are questions to not ask and just enjoy. No matter what, my motivation is back (it’s official, now that I’m writing a blog post) and hopefully it stays long enough to send something cool.